Series: The Dark Knight, Batman 3

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Christian Bale on the next 'Batman' and 'Terminator Salvation'

In part two of our interview with Christian Bale star of 'The Dark Knight', the actor talks candidly about his profession and continuing the Batman franchise for a third installment. He also gives us the scoop on his latest venture, reinventing the character John Connor in 'Terminator: Salvation'.

"What we do for a living is completely ridiculous," says Bale. "We call ourselves grown men who are pretending to be other people for a living and the more ridiculous I view what I do, the more I love it and the more I appreciate and am able to do this for a living. The more seriously I take it and it sounds paradoxical, but the more serious and more dramatic a role gets in any genre, the more ridiculous you have made it."

Bale praised not only Ledger's work in Dark Knight, but also all of his cast members. "We have a damn good cast straight throughout this movie. It becomes that much easier to create great scenes."

Does Bale see a sequel to the 'Dark Knight' on the horizon?

"You have to ask Chris that. Look I see that in finishing the movie, I want to know what happens? What is going to happen? It is completely in the hands of Chris of whether he desires to do that or not. I will bet a lot of money that he hasn't made any indication of whether that was going to happen or not, but it's completely his decision."

Bale sees two main challenges if Nolan were to create another Batman movie.

"I think that there is a great challenge to it for two reasons. One is there have been a number of sequels that have surpassed the first movie. You look at 'Godfather 2'; 'Empire Strikes Back' in my personal opinion surpass the first one. There have not been many times that you get a third in a trilogy that manage to be the best and I see that as a good enough reason to want to tackle it. There is also another challenge, which is Heath has done such a superb job with this, how do you create a superior villain to that?"

When asked about Nolan, Bale can't seem to imagine continuing on in the franchise without the director's involvement.

"He's created this. This is his. No matter how much there are great performances or how much there is a great cast; everything comes down to the director. He casts those people. He is responsible for picking the right people for the right parts. He's responsible for the whole damn thing.

"If the movie works it's all due to Chris. If the movie fails, it's all due to Chris. The director should take the credit and all the blame whether a movie works or not. He should because he is the one that's making all the decisions. I am just the one providing a piece to the puzzle, but he's picked me to provide that piece. So if I'm not doing it well ok I'm to blame for not bringing that up, but he's to blame for casting me in the first place."

This is now Bale's third time working with the director, in 'Batman Begins', 'The Prestige' and now 'The Dark Knight'. What sort of working environment does Nolan create on set?

"Well I can speak for myself, but I have a great trust in his abilities and he's going to be making a very smart and engaging movie," Bale said, but adds. "It never stops me from questioning him because everyone should have people questioning. It doesn't benefit to have yes men around the place, but I have yet to come up with a question that he hasn't considered before I've asked it and I hope he would be able to feel the same about me.

"He does know I am the kind of actor that can arrive and without having him tell me anything, I have my own opinion of how I think a scene should be shot and I will present it to him. Then a collaboration begins of him telling me, ‘what the hell was that? What are you doing, you're missing the point?' or ‘Bang on that was it, we're moving on.' So I hope he has the same trust in me that I have in him.

Bale seems to enjoy franchises. Up next for the actor is tackling the fourth 'Terminator' movie, subtitled 'Salvation'.

"That was actually something I questioned greatly, do I want to do that again? What I saw with 'Terminator' was what I saw with 'Batman Begins'. 'Batman Begins' was clearly an origin story and we were in many ways ignoring any of the movies, which came before. This won't be the case with 'The Terminator'. We certainly will be staying true to the mythology, certainly one and two more so than three."

Bale isn't looking to simply rehash what's already been done so well by James Cameron, who created the franchise but is no longer involved with it.

"It's the opportunity and the chance to reinvent and revitalize that. There's no point in making it otherwise. That's my aim and that's why I finally decided. It took a long time to consider and why I finally decided yes I wanted to try this. That's the responsibility that we have as filmmakers and that's what I'm aiming to achieve."

So how has the film been going so far? "'The Terminator' is going well. It's a tall order. It really is and I recognize that. We have a lot of work to do and I just started as I just finished 'Public Enemy' a couple weeks back."

Far before 'Terminator: Salvation' comes out, you can check out Bale as Batman in 'The Dark Knight' when it hits theaters today!